It's Always 'Look for the Woman'

By Wesley Pruden
WahingtonTimes.com

Theresa May (AP)

Trying to sound wise about another country’s
politics is usually a fool’s game, and from this
side of the Atlantic it looked likeBoris
Johnsonhad
a lock on becoming the next prime minister in
London. He was the face of the successful effort to
pry Britain from the moldy clutches of Europe, and
who could stop him?

Well, the French, as they always do, have a word for
it. Or in this case, three words: “Chercher la
femme,” or, “when trying to resolve a mystery, look
for the woman.”

Mr. Johnson, who served two successful terms as
the mayor of London, clearly wanted it. Who
wouldn’t? Shouldn’t every little English boy (and
some from Wales and Scotland, too) dream of growing
up to live at No. 10 Downing Street? In the wake of
the stunning referendum sending Britain out to be
Great Britain again, he andMichael
Gove, the other leader of the Leave campaign,
would be the dream ticket.

So Britain was stunned again whenMr.
Johnsonagreed
there should be a new neighbor on Downing Street,
“but that person won’t be me.” He didn’t say why,
and the guessing began. When someone got an errant
email, sent by his wife and intended forMr.
Gove’s eyes only, it blew up the dream ticket.
He could supportBoris
Johnson, his wife tried to tell him, but “Do not
concede any ground. Be your stubborn best. GOOD
LUCK.” She spared him an exclamation point but the
capital letters were all hers.

The moral here, for politicians everywhere, is that
wives and emails can be a deadly mix. No state
secrets were exposed, in part because the wife,
Sarah Vine, doesn’t have any. She’s a columnist for
the Daily Mail, and gossip is harmless stuff next to
a nation’s state secrets pilfered by hackers for a
competing foreign power. Moral No. 2 for
politicians: Beware of newspaper columnists, no
matter what they say their interests are different
from yours.

Sarah Vine, like most columnists, has views on and
ideas about almost everything, and likes to spill
tidbits from her marriage in the Daily Mail. She
describes how her husband went to sleep at 10:30
p.m. on the day of the referendum, while votes were
still being counted and the vote was getting close.
The result of the Brexit vote, she wrote in the
errant email, “means he — we — are now charged with
implementing the instructions of 17 million people.”

We? The revealing pronoun recalls Tonto’s famous
remark to Lone Ranger, who looked at angry Indians
to the right and angry Indians to the left, Indians
ahead and Indians behind, and said: “It looks like
we’re surrounded, Tonto.” The faithful sidekick
shook his head. “Where you get this ‘we’ stuff,
white man?” This might have been the glimpse of the
future thatBoris
Johnsongot,
and he decided, like Tonto, that he didn’t want any
of that we stuff, either.

Now there’s a second la femme in the game, with no
we stuff. Theresa May, the home secretary — there’s
no equivalent in America, with its federal system of
50 states, but the home secretary runs the home
front, sort of — has filed to succeed David Cameron
as the chairman of the Conservative Party, and as
prime minister when he steps down in October, as
promised.

She voted “Remain” in the referendum, but embraces
the result with emphatic finality. “Brexit means
Brexit,” she says, “and there won’t be any attempt
to return by a back door.” Trying to undo the result
would be a profound betrayal, but betrayal is not
always regarded as profoundly bad by the political
class everywhere.

BothMichael
Goveand
Theresa May, regarded as the top two of the four
candidates working for a party decision this week,
are tough on immigration, the emotional issue that
drove the referendum. She says the supposed benefits
of mass (and uncontrolled) migration are “close to
zero,” and that it’s mass migration that is
threatening Britain’s cohesion.

Mr. Gove, who hit the immigration hardest of all
the leaders of the Leave campaign, is the
counter-extremist hawk with the hardest beak. In his
book, “Celsius 7/7” a decade ago, he warned of “the
widespread reluctance” to acknowledge and scrutinize
the nature of the radical Islamic threat in Britain.
He stresses Britain’s links to the world beyond
Europe. He speaks of Britain “taking its place
alongside countries like Australia, Canada, New
Zealand and America as a self-governing democracy.”
English-speaking all, with unapologetic Anglo-Saxon
roots, as the French have no doubt taken note.

Neither front-runner would likely find Barack Obama
a congenial partner, but Mr. Obama will soon be
dispatched to history, so that won’t matter at all.
The special relationship is on schedule for
restoration.